It doesn’t care how old you are, what kind of car you drive or what school you attended. If hair loss is in your genes, it’s hard to escape. Each year, millions of Americans wage pharmaceutical, surgical and synthetic warfare against receding hairlines, exposed scalps and thinning manes. Local treatment specialists say the battle is not what it once was.

“A lot of patients think of an old technique – the dreaded plugs,” said Dr. Robert Leonard, a hair transplant specialist with an office in Braintree. “I haven’t done one of those since 1991,” he said.

Modern transplant techniques involve skin grafts with no more than three hairs, Leonard said. These transplants give a “very, very natural look,” he said.

Leonard said today’s transplants not only look much better, they last.

But they’ll cost you – from $4,500 to $8,000, depending on the size of the area being treated.

Other treatments attempt to stop hair loss, such as the daily oral medication Propecia, which costs $50 to $75 per month; the over-the-counter foam Rogaine, which costs $50 for a three-month supply; or a year of low-level laser therapy for $1,700 to $3,500.

Insurance companies typically don’t cover hair-loss treatments, categorizing them as cosmetic procedures. But hair loss is a problem for about half of all men and about one of out of every four women, and people spend millions fighting it.

“Baldness makes people look older,” Leonard said.

Men tend to start losing hair from the crown of their head; women are more likely to see an overall thinning after menopause, experts say.

Not everyone wants – or can afford – to go under the knife or use topical treatments to try to halt their hair loss.

“Nobody has ever gotten a full head of hair from Rogaine,” said Tom Mansour, co-owner of Chick’s Hair Replacement Centre in Brockton.

“Years ago, they used to get them out of the box,” Mansour said. Now, he stitches and styles pieces to match each client.

Although pre-fabricated wigs are less costly – $35 to $75 – Mansour said the best synthetic option is a “custom unit,” a hair replacement piece that is molded to fit each scalp. Custom fits cost $300 to $900, he said.

“It’ll take 10 to 15 years off,” Mansour said.

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HAIR LOSS GLOSSARY

Hair transplantation: A surgery that removes skin grafts from the areas of the head with hair and places them in bald spots, allowing one’s own hair to grow.

50: Average age of someone seeking treatment 50 million: American men and women with hair loss 100: Average number of hairs a person loses each day 150,000: Average number of hairs on an adult head that is not balding 98 percent: Hair loss cases caused by genetics 0: Cases of hair loss attributable to wearing a hat or helmet, or to how hair is brushed

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TAKE THE BALDNESS TEST

If you’re not balding yet, is hair loss in your future?

A person can usually take a look at a family photo album to see if hair loss is on his or her horizon, but now treatment centers offer genetic testing that lets you make sure.

The federal government approved the test, first for men, and more recently for women, too. Dr. Robert Leonard offers the test at his Braintree office for $149.

The test, which involves taking a cheek swab, can predict if a person will be bald by 40.